


Beasts of Sea

by Zither



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F, Ficlet, Implied/Referenced Canonical Character Death, Memories, Pirates, Post-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 09:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11734035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zither/pseuds/Zither
Summary: The aftermath of Isabela and Merrill's first prize.





	Beasts of Sea

It was a near-bloodless surrender, in the end.

“Would have been a bloodless one, if Frederica hadn't given herself a splinter hopping the rail too fast,” Isabela said, casting a critical eye over her crew. There were one or two muffled jeers. “Lucky they were all too scared to wonder what she was shouting about, isn't it?”

Merrill tugged at her neckerchief. The knot had almost worked its way undone, in defiance of the care she'd put into tying it this morning. It was damp: sweat, spray, or some combination of both, she couldn't tell. She began twisting it around her fingers. When it came loose, she scrunched it up in a ball and held it tight in her fist. The sun, which always felt hotter out at sea, beat down on the crown of her head. Dizziness overwhelmed her for a moment.

Nobody noticed. Nobody but Isabela, who steadied her with a cool, casual hand on her shoulder.

“Your first prize.” Her voice was pitched low, just outside the crew’s hearing range. They’d begun to drift back to their duties, spurred on by the quartermaster’s shouts. “How does it sit?”

“We did worse things,” she began, and stopped. _Back in Kirkwall_ , she'd wanted to say, or _with Hawke_ : but both stuck in her throat. Isabela, she knew, would understand. Neither of them had glanced over their shoulders as the ship slid past the boom chain out into open sea, but the smell had followed them anyway. For days afterward, Merrill had found herself picking city grit from between her toes. It got everywhere: between slats, into sheets, underneath scarves and bandanas.

She could guess what the next few words on the tip of Isabela’s tongue were. _They won’t all be this easy, or this peaceful_. But they went unspoken, and Merrill loved Isabela a little more for that.

A still face drifted through her mind. The merchant captain. What thoughts had passed through her head as she knelt weaponless on the foredeck, Merrill didn’t know. She remembered pieces of the obvious: stains on her collar, a mass of stiff grey curls framing her salt-wrinkled features. “Am I frightening?” she burst out.

Some people might have laughed. Isabela, who had seen Merrill turn whole troupes of seasoned mercenaries inside out, considered and said, “Why do you ask, Kitten?”

The merchant captain’s first mate had been an elf, which was unusual enough. Still more surprising, he had been Dalish. She remembered watching the lines of his vallaslin dance in time to the flicker of a muscle in his jaw. Stranger though he was, he’d recognised her. She wasn't the crew's only mage, nor even the most intimidating one - Fai was at least two heads taller and several widths broader – so that couldn’t have been the reason for his wild, wide-eyed stare. For a moment, she’d thought he was about to defy Isabela’s shouted orders and hurl himself over the side. He’d had a knife in his hand; the point had been shaking, aimed straight down at the deck. 

“That ship’s mate –“ she tried. The boards were slippery underneath her feet. Her heels did not sink, as they would have done in mud; no strands of grass caught between her toes. Somewhere off to the side, metal rang against metal. Her neck prickled. There was a taste of iron and salt in her mouth. If she were on land, she could become a vine and escape into the earth. As it was, she reached for the ocean. No spell she knew could shape her into a wave, but she learned their rhythm as they flung themselves against the side of the ship. They grew choppier. She saw the face of another man, an inky landscape distorted by fear.

Iron and salt.

Then Isabela’s hands settled on her shoulders. The cool, calloused pressure of her fingertips had a steadying effect. Merrill pushed up into it, towards the sound of her voice.

“I don’t know about frightening, but I daresay you're the least wicked person on this ship.” Behind them, Greaves swore horribly at one of the newer crew members, and Isabela’s tone turned wry. “That may not be much of a comfort, now I think about it.”

Stepping back a little, Merrill clasped Isabela’s hands before they could fall. _You’re no wickeder than I am_. The words stuck again, so she tried to look them with her eyes instead. She could feel the tension in Isabela’s forearms, ever-present and radiating downward. The crew were watching them, even if nobody dared comment; they’d have to separate soon, return to their duties. Only after it was time to retire to their cabin would they be able to relax, curl around each other, think about the unsaid. A mirror to Merrill’s own, Isabela’s body was a store of trapped memories: candlelight running along the edge of a blade, water sloshing through the hold of a ship, sellers' cries echoing around a marketplace. They would hold those moments for each other. Isabela would unknot Merrill’s scarf, fingers lingering at the nape of her neck for a second. Merrill would release the catches on Isabela’s torc, hefting the weight in her hands before she laid it down.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
